Apple Says Siri's Abortion Flubs Are ‘Beta Testing'

Siri started a controversy earlier this week by providing answers that seemed anti-abortion to several critics, but Apple said it was all a glitch.

“Our customers want to use Siri to find out all types of information, and while it can find a lot, it doesn’t always find what you want,” Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple, told the New York Times. “These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks.”

Essentially Apple admitted that it may have rushed Siri to the iPhone 4S a little too soon -- or that its quality assurance isn't as good as it may have thought.

Apple had to say something because the American Civil Liberties Union and NARAL Pro-Choice America were asking for answers (and if you contact Apple head Tim Cook, you know someone will get back to you.)

Much of the blame seems to be placed on third-parties that developed Siri's search engine, but doesn't that seem a bit of a cop-out? Apple is a company with billions of dollars of resources and it couldn't have made its search an excellent one? Perhaps now Apple will work to get all the bugs out of new features before placing them on the market -- not only because it may cost money and damage its reputation, but also because it could place the company in the middle of a political mess.

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